Immortal
by Raithe
Summary: Shomti is a genius. He always has been, and always will be. But what's the world going to do if he's more than that? Imagine if Shomti was an immortal... what then? Sequel to Genius, obviously contains yaoi. As was Genius, this is and will be very dark.
1. Beginning the End

Haha! Sequel to Genius, I present to you Immortal! An idea somewhat stolen and adapted from a favorite movie of mine, "The One", this is less a Sly Cooper fanfiction than its predecessor... but I'm classifying it as one because it does have Sly Cooper characters in it, and Sly himself will probably make a couple of appearances. I claim no copyright to the characters from the games, copyright to which belongs to Sucker Punch. I do, however, claim my copyright to Shomti, Caliga, and the story in general, whether in whole or in part. If you haven't read Genius, I recommend you go do so now, because this will confuse you to no end if you don't. I know the first third sucks and reeks of fangirl bull, but I've at least upped the quality of the writing and will soon upload my improvements to it. Now, without further ado, enjoy the first chapter of Immortal.

**Beginning the End**

Shomti fiddled with the lock before him, then frustratedly grabbed a nearby crowbar and used his unnatural strength to pry at it until the whole construction shattered. Caliga shrugged, glancing between the lock and his lover, before he stepped through the open door and raised his cane to be able to defend himself instantly against any threat.

"Someone will have heard that, we need to get to the rendezvous fast." A cat came around a corner, but Caliga was expecting him, and a practiced swing fast around and down impacted the back of the feline's neck and snapped it. Shomti stepped forward with a weapon he designed himself, a cross between a basket hilted sword and a trench knife, and swung it downward, quickly decapitating the guard to ensure his death. "Let's hope nobody's put two and two together, and she's still alive in there." They didn't mention Neyla's name, since they knew there'd be listening devices throughout the house. Shomti thrust forward in an explosive stab through the heart of a security guard nearby, and kicked him off his blade with strength that shouldn't have looked so effortless.

"Yeah, well, we're not dealing with criminals... they shouldn't know her." The next room happened to be a training center of some sort, filled with various exercise equipments, and Shomti cast his eyes through the room. All the equipment had a user, and there were several people waiting their turn. "..." This small pause was followed by an expletive a bit too mature for this story. "You think you can take the ones on the left?"

"Uh... our left or theirs? I left my snakewood cane, remember."

"That sucks. Alright, you can have the ones on the right. Our right. I guess I have to take the ones on the left."

"Have fun, lover."

"You know me too well." A quick kiss on Caliga's cheek, and Shomti leapt at a nearby exerciser, his sword swiftly cutting out both the wolf's legs and soon moving on to split open another canine's chest cavity, cleaving efficiently through bone with the power behind the fox's every move. The Clockwerk incident left him stronger than he'd ever been, and yet his strength was still growing. That was years ago now. He'd be twenty-one soon.

Twist, drop underneath a kick—hey, these guys actually knew something!—and sweep out his leg. Several grabbed him, but even their muscular arms couldn't quite hold him back efficiently enough. Sure, they had his arms pretty good, and he couldn't run away. But why run...? One dropped to the ground clutching his crotch, and the others looked at Shomti in puzzlement. His foot darted up and snapped a leopard's neck to answer their unspoken question. "You can kick, and so can I. Plus I daresay I do it better than you pussies." A punch landed hard on his face, but that was okay. A few good hits were fine. And another. He was strong, sure... but hits were hits. He shouldn't encourage them to hit him... He jabbed an elbow back with so much strength and leverage it just threw the guy holding onto that arm, then he used it to grab the tiger that had let go of him, and pull him in close to throw over his hip at the husky that hadn't. Neither ended up any better than the other, and the fox took a much needed break, sitting on the pair and knocking both out with nonchalant punches, then picking up his broadsword/trench knife and waiting for Caliga. Shortly, the wolf dispatched the final combatant by shoving the tip of his cane through one side of his throat... and out the other. The blood stained the black ebony only as long as it rested on the wood; Caliga wiped it off and the cane could have been new. "Ready, love?"

"Of course. Floorplan says just a few doors down this hallway, then a right. You go get her, and I'll get what we're after." Shomti nodded and ran off to pick up their inside man. Well... woman. Neyla was an excellent mole, and got them all the info they needed without any trouble. So far, she'd only been caught once, and that was because one of the security guards had been double dipping in the black market. He was easily paid off, then knocked off. A locked door met Shomti at the designated area... a bad sign. He made it through by slamming his heel into the door right next to the knob, shattering the wood of the doorframe and allowing the door itself to swing open on its hinges. Inside, Neyla was trying to explain her actions to someone. When the door opened, however, she pulled out a pistol and shot the man in the head.

"You're late, Shomti. I expect promptness from you, foxboy." Shomti rolled his eyes and chuckled, knowing it was all an inside joke.

"I like those big entrances."

"Me too, you know." Caliga appeared in the doorway behind Shomti, paused and looked back momentarily, then held up with a grin the simple musical instrument they'd come to retrieve.

"Run for your life!"

"Uhh..."

"No, seriously, you'd better run. That, uh, lead we thought was bogus?" The one where Doctor M had been supplying the mansion's owner with genetically altered monsters which could be controlled remotely. Shomti remembered. "It... well, don't stick around, or he'll tell you." Caliga motioned back, where something large smashed through a too-small doorway and roared.

"..." Another expletive too mature for this story. "You two, get out! I think I can handle him!" Shomti grabbed Neyla's pistol and fired a shot in the air, stepping out into the hallway and standing spread-eagle to get the being's attention, then Shomti launched a mental assault. The device controlling it... if he could just overload it... just like a normal mind, then. Shomti took all the sensory input he had, and jammed it into the creature's head. It stumbled back a bit, then started to step forward. Shomti borrowed a trick from Clockwerk—the old coon had plenty of tricks up his sleeves—and planted a self-amplifying loop of sensory perception in the being's head. It didn't take long with that ace in the hole to bring it to its knees, and as long as Shomti kept the virus up... not a problem...

There. He swung his sword down, then up, and down, and across. No limbs, no head. Not a single thing it can do. "Well, I suppose you could piss on me, but whatever." And he ran out to his Gang outside, glancing between the two of them. "You got it?"

"Yeah. Don't worry. This time, it IS the right one. I checked."

"Excellent, lover. Hm, you know that thing you've been wanting me to—" Neyla rolled her eyes and smacked Shomti on the back of the head. "Right. Sorry. Let's talk about that some other time then, shall we?"

"Ugh. Shomti, you have the worst sense of timing ever." And the three ran, quickly getting out of sight of the mansion and climbing into a hired car. The black market in various places ran getaway cars for hire. You just had to make sure you made it clear to the driver that you paid, you were going to get where you were going, or he wasn't leaving the car in his lifetime. Which incidentally would be quite short if you didn't get where you wanted to get.

"Drive!" This was Caliga, who had let Neyla take the front seat so that Shomti could lie down in his lap, but considered it a priority to instantly take psychological control of the driver. No decisions unless Caliga made them. "Run red lights, stop signs, evade cops, anything you have to do, got it?" The driver nodded and stamped on the gas, swerving at the first light to avoid a car that had the right-of-way, then speeding across the intersection.

"...He drives better than Murray did. That's good."

"From what I've heard, Murray must be a shitty driver."

"Yeah." Shomti rubbed his head as he thought about the first encounter he had with the hippo's driving. "He is. Definitely." The driver slammed on the brakes a few minutes of silence later, and Caliga pulled out some coins to give him a tip, tossing them in the cupholder and jumping out of the car, mind swerving back and forth to make sure nobody was in the area. Nobody was, according to his ivory-white eyes. Shomti's, on the other hand, made out a semi-familiar silhouette on a nearby building. "Hey, N—tigress. You see that, up there?"

"...That's not possible." This got Caliga's attention, and he tried in vain to see what the others were looking at, snarling to himself as he remembered he was blind to some things. "Let's get in. We need to clear out of here."

"Why, what is it?"

"I'll have to tell you later." Shomti darted into the building, coming out with both his arms full of sharp things he'd made at his nearby knifeshop. "Get back in the car! Hey! Driver! There's been a change in plan. Get us outta here, or you're gonna seriously piss us off. That's not that great a situation to be in, so I suggest you drive if you wanna live. Understand?" The husky nodded fearfully, and as soon as they were all in, he drove off even faster than he'd gone to get there. "Here's the address. If we're not there in fifteen flat, you're going to have one less limb real soon."

"I get it, I get it." He twisted his head, foot still hard on the gas, and wracked his memory for the address's location. "No prob. I'll get you there in ten." Caliga took this moment to look over at the fox next to him and raise his hands in confusion.

"It... was me. Or someone like me. A tall fox with a scythe, with a hood on. Looked like he had robes too. I knew the species from his tail. He just... stood there, glaring down. Wouldn't you get a bit scared?"

"I... didn't feel him. Didn't sense him."

"I saw him, though! I did, I swear!" Neyla turned around in the front seat and nodded at Caliga. "See? He was there." The driver, keeping his eyes on the road, used one hand to tap Shomti on the shoulder. The vulpine almost bit him out of reaction. "What is it?"

"Uh... fox, with robes and a scythe, right?"

"You weren't paid to listen to our conversations. Just drive."

"He's in the road ahead of us. There are two others, and they... look like you."

"..." This time it wasn't just a single expletive, it was a whole string of them, and Shomti grabbed a knife from the pile of sword-based weapons and held it up against the driver's throat with his left hand, spiked heart scar shining in the scarce light that reached the inside of the car from the streetlights outside. The husky slammed on the brakes, and Shomti grinned, then slit his throat anyway, licking the blood off his blade.

"Whoever they are, they don't know who they're screwing with." Three doors opened, and three individuals stepped out of the car. Neyla had her gun out and ready—she hadn't been able to bring her whip—as she walked slowly forward. Shomti had a pair of basket-hilt broadswords he'd made, twirling them idly as he inched towards what appeared to be the doppelgangers of the entire group. And Caliga had his cane up and at the ready, only able to See his own duplicate.

It was the other Shomti that spoke first.

"You're probably thinking we're hopelessly outmatched." He pulled his scythe forward, stepping back into a vulpine stance much as he had in Paris fighting against Neyla, and readied his scythe for a slicing cut. "That, perhaps, we don't know what we're up against. Truth is, you three have no idea how superior we are, and it'll be your undoing." Then he was there, right up against Shomti. How the Hell did he move so fast...? Shomti wasn't left long to ponder before the keen blade of his opponent's scythe severed his head entirely, a numb feeling encompassing his whole body... the thump as he fell wasn't even really processed... he just stared up at the other him, and he swore he heard him laughing before the mind stopped entirely. No Heaven for him. No Hell either. Just an eternity of sleeping without dreams.

Caliga, meanwhile, was wrestling with the stronger and apparently smarter incarnation which had mysteriously appeared in this world, when a mental attack smashed through his defenses, took hold of his heart, and while he was powerless to do anything... stopped it entirely.

Neyla had fired off all the shots in her pistol, and each time the other her simply moved out of the way, quick as lightning. That... couldn't have been possible. Then a whip lashed across her face, and she dropped to the ground, panting. It'd be several seconds before—URKH! _How did she move so fast...?_ Snap. The purple-furred tigress dropped her other self's head after twisting to break the neck, and looked over at the other two.

"How many is that now?"

"I'd say that was something like our three hundredth set. It's getting pretty easy, at least. According to Caliga's spirit contact, that means we have another fifteen Gangs to get rid of. Lover, check this out. He hadn't even sealed away Clockwerk." The fox motioned to his lover to come and look for himself. "How pathetic."

"Freeze!" Ugh. Policemen. Not a difficult proposition, but did Shomti really want to have to deal with them? "You three are under arrest! You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, you will be appointed one. You have the right to a fair and speedy trial by a jury of your peers."

"You're supposed to recite those once we're officially arrested and getting in the car. I have no intention of going anywhere near your jail, and even if I did it couldn't hold me for long. Neyla, you know where we'll end up if we get out of here in this vicinity?"

"Uhh... not somewhere we want to be."

"Greeat. I guess we have to take out these guys and relocate first." The policemen looked between each other in confusion. Just the opportunity that Shomti and the others needed... in fact, they didn't even need an opportunity, with how fast they were. Shomti lopped off the head of a pug—he never much liked them, they were ugly—and Neyla went straight for the throat of a cat, her whip wrapping around its neck before she wrenched with ungodly strength and tore the feline's arteries while it was still reaching for its gun. Caliga, meanwhile, whipped his magically reinforced cane low and broke the legs of a cop with one strike, then twisted fully around and brought his weapon down on the coatimundi's chest with strength that sent him straight down, reduced the majority of his ribcage to dust, and sent a shockwave through the earth on impact.

"That's all of them, then?" It was just a split second, and all three policemen were on the ground dead. Caliga grinned at his lover, who was wiping off his scythe blade on a serviceman's jacket. "You keep telling me you have to keep your blade clean."

"Or else it'll corrode. And no, I don't want to charm it or enchant it or whatever, because it's a nice symbol. You don't have to get it." He stuck his tongue out at the rather older wolf, who rolled his eyes and pulled the fox into a warm embrace, muzzle very close to Shomti's ear. "Mrr...?"

"I'm right here, you two. You know that, right?" Shomti rolled his eyes and turned in his lover's arms, giving him a deep, passionate kiss. "Oh, gods..." This last in an exasperated tone of voice from Neyla, and Shomti pulled back, directing a wink at Caliga.

"Don't worry foxie, we can continue in our room... with the door locked... mrrr..." The wolf paused by the corpse of one of the policemen and, with his footpaw, flicked open the handcuff pocket then hooked the cuffs and kicked them up into the air, catching them in one paw, all in about a second. "I might need these."

"What about a key...?"

"We need to leave, you two. Seriously, we do."

"Who needs a key, lover...? You don't need to get out... can't you trust me while you're helpless? I won't let anybody hurt you." A giggle from the foxie and he playfully pushed Caliga.

"I'm just worried about YOU hurting me. What's gonna be our safety word tonight?"

"GUYS!" Neyla slapped them both upside the head, and glared at the two of them. "My God, your libidos must have increased twenty times too..." Shomti shrugged and looked over at Caliga, who chuckled. "Ugh. You two are hopeless." The couple beamed back at her, then swerved their heads at a nearby cop car that was speeding towards them with the lights glaring and sirens wailing. "See? I told you we should have gotten going."

"But that's our ride. It's not going to be a problem. Over that distance, I can reach over a hundred miles an hour. Not a problem."

"Quit bragging, love, you know I can hit a hundred fifty over the same distance, and Neyla can reach seventy-five or more. Doesn't matter, because those cars are doing sixty and closing fast." Shomti shrugged and carefully set his scythe down on the ground, straightened his shirt, then leapt off the ground with a grin wide on his face as he sped toward the cop cars. He went zero to sixty in that first push forward, and didn't stop accelerating until about a hundred miles an hour... since that was the point at which he jumped up and through the windshield of one of the cars, body twisting in mid-air so that he took out both the cops with hammerfist strikes to their necks. Once landing in the backseat, he scrambled back to the front, his hands latching onto the wheel still clutched by the former driver. He'd broken their spines, of course, and neither really knew what the Hell had happened before they died. Shomti, meanwhile, pulled the cop's foot off the gas and pressed his own onto the brake. It was a little creepy, the still warm body slumping forward against his as he stopped the car, but he was used to creepy things. He was Shomti, and had dealt with worse in the past few years.

The fox stepped out of the car, then drew the nearby cop's pistol and fired off a couple of rounds at the two policemen pointing their guns at his lover and... well, Neyla. They hit their mark, obviously: Shomti had vision roughly twenty times better than the average person, plus a little simply from his nature. So more like roughly twenty-five times better. Basically, that added up to seeing from five hundred feet what others would see at twenty. And so, each bullet landed exactly where it was supposed to. The accuracy of his vision meant he might as well have been next to the policemen.

"Nice shot, love." A couple of seconds and the other two were skidding to a stop next to him, Caliga carrying his scythe. "You know, you get all the fun. Why can't I kill some of the cops every now and then?"

"Because you don't." Shomti grinned and stuck his tongue out playfully, snatching his scythe from the wolf's hands. "You could if you did it before me. But you always take so long."

"Yeah, yeah... right, let's get out of here and back to our world. I have an appointment I can't miss tomorrow." Shomti smiled smugly and seductively put a hand on the wolf's chest, looking up at him with an innocent face, the smug expression gone.

"Do you mind staying up late with me...?"

"Not if it's for the reason I think it is, love." Neyla rolled her eyes and grabbed them both by the ears, jerking them along as she started to run. Shomti batted away her hand while Caliga jerked his head to get his ear out, but they kept running for a couple of minutes, dazzling anyone that saw the trio whiz by like speeding cars, faster than most people dared to go on the freeway. Then the three stopped, panting rather heavily—Caliga less so than the other two since he was a better runner—and then collected themselves, Shomti holding Caliga's hand as he tore through the boundaries between universes with a sound like ripping cloth and tugged his lover through after him.

The two canids ended up several feet off the ground in their hotel, and dropped to their feet. Seconds later, Neyla followed, and the three parted ways. Well, Neyla parted ways with Shomti and Caliga. The other two, now... they didn't part for a long time. Until morning, for that matter.

...

"You... philistines. Ugh... Caliga, don't you have somewhere to be?"

"Yeah, so?"

"...Put some goddamn clothes on. And take those handcuffs off Shomti. I don't doubt that he wants to be somewhere other than here too."

"Uuhh..."

"..."

"I can explain."

"Don't tell me. I don't want to hear it."

"I really didn't get a key. And, uh... well, the other one's... eh... frozen."

"...You're an asshole, you know that, Caliga?"

"What time is it?"

"Ten."

"...Shit."

Thus began the Gang's day. Not the best of starts. Shomti would have joined in the conversation, if not for the gag and blindfold Caliga had put on him. Each one of them was twenty times their own natural strength at this point. Well, actually, 19.75... according to the spirit that Caliga summoned a while ago, there were three hundred sixteen universes where their lives were considered close enough to theirs to be parallels of their own lives. One of them was their own. If, then, they killed the other three hundred fifteen Shomtis, Caligas, and Neylas, they'd become three hundred sixteen times their own natural strength. There were—they'd confirmed it—fifteen Gangs left, not including their own. With every death, the strength divides among the remaining individuals. There wasn't much of a change to begin with, but they kept at it for a few years, and now three hundred Gangs and nine hundred kills later—not counting the police in their way—they'd gotten to a truly superhuman state, and still weren't satisfied. When Shomti swung his scythe now, he was capable of creating a sonic boom; Caliga was able to beat nearly any car in a mile-long run; and Neyla could play sixteen games of chess at a time with Deep Blue and win all of them. In fact, recently in one universe she had the opportunity to do just that, and had in fact won.

Shomti's punches now no longer just broke bone, they could—if he wasn't careful—propel his fist straight through someone's chest. His various weapons, scythes or crescent blades or whatever he happened to use with an edge on it, sliced straight through bullet-proof vests and armor when he needed them to, even though he knew it ruined his blades whenever he did that.

Neyla, who had at some point taken basic lessons from Shomti on the workings of psychics, could break into someone's mind as fluidly as Shomti could, or was able to subtly influence someone's workings such that they believed whatever she told them. She was the perfect liar.

And Caliga's Sight had improved twenty times as well, allowing him to see tiny details that had escaped him before. Such as ice, even though that was not really a priority here. His Sight, though, was pretty much ordinary vision by now in its clarity and range, while still retaining its extra-sensory quality that permitted him to better work magic. Not only that, but he now had the ability to know with but a glance the construction and purpose of magickal constructs.

They were all incredible. They had all they needed to have in order to be the perfect criminals, even their healing factor having gone up to twenty times its previous level and rendering them next to invincible. But of course it wasn't that simple. They weren't exactly after the power, even though it was a very nice side effect. The immortality offered by Clockwerk was gone... but who's to say there's not more than one way to obtain an eternity of life? All the wasted energies in the other Gangs had to be collected, concentrated, and poured into these three. A single Gang, out of the three hundred sixteen universes where the Gang existed. One, out of many. There was no point closer to eternity than that. Now, years after deciding on the plan and enacting it, they were quite nearly done. This was when it got interesting. If it worked, none in the Gang could ever die.

Shomti, along with the others, would be nothing less than an immortal.

Good, right? :3 I rather like it. Review with your opinions! I'm writing this for you!


	2. Dam

It's a little short, I know, but meh. I got it done eventually. In any case, here's the next bit of their story. :3

**Dam**

Shomti's eyes darted open and he sat bolt upright. "Caliga, love?"

"I noticed too." The vulpine looked around cautiously, but it wasn't too long before in the dark, a cold piece of steel pointedly rested against his neck. Right between the vertebrae... cervical vertebrae two and three. Then it slid in, and he stiffened. It wasn't long before his body went limp in Shomti's arms. Caliga had choked out his other self, and presently something buzzed in the pocket of the only (living) fox in the room. He pulled out his phone, and found an image message of an empty bed. No doubt Neyla's. Where was that cat...? He was in the middle of texting back "Find her" when a new message came in. "nvm, just a bio" Ah. So the other Neyla had just gotten up to go to the bathroom. Now it wasn't long, he was sure, before Neyla would come through their door...

"Hey you two. Got'em?" The cat pushed the door open, and the two threw a pair of winks in her direction.

"Oh, we got more than them. These two had a nice collection of—"

"Don't tell me, Caliga, I don't want to hear it."

"Right. Well, let's get back." The three disappeared with a flash of light and a ripping sound as Shomti brought Caliga along with him, since the wolf still hadn't quite gotten the hang of extra-dimensional travel. That was okay; any excuse to hold Caliga's hand would do. The Gang materialized about twenty-five feet over an expanse of empty asphalt, buildings no less than a hundred yards away. Abandoned part of town, especially at this hour. This time of night was the time when you'd get stabbed three times, mugged twice, and gunned down between four and six times before you reached your next-door neighbor's front porch. But not this Gang... they were too good for something like that. As Shomti landed and rolled, he noticed something new. Something he could use. No doubt the energy from their last targets had unlocked some sort of extra-sensory perception, which he normally had to ask Caliga for and which ordinarily neutralized his sense of sight. Perhaps he'd squeezed it out of Clockwerk's mind, like wringing drips of water from a sponge.

It wasn't long, then, before he twisted and turned towards Caliga. It seemed to take an eternity, even though he was moving as fast as he could, to shove the wolf out of the way. A bullet whizzed by both their faces and Shomti growled back at the shooter.

"Drop the gun or you're dead." The leopard flinched, then narrowed his eyes at the trio. "Think I can't kill you?"

"Shut up, man. I'm the one with a gun. Everyone, hands where I can see 'em. Toss over all the cash and jewelry you got." Shomti peered interestedly at the feline's chest. He could see his heart beating. Hmm... The fox snapped through the mugger's mental defenses with a bit of force, and then reached for his heart. Thump-thump... thump-thump... thump... And he stopped it. The powerless cat slumped forward, the gun discharging as he landed on the ground.

"Asshole. Come on, love, let's get out of here." The vulpine stood up, temporarily blotting out the full moon from Neyla's vision and again forcing her to remember with a pang how much she really did love him even though he wasn't hers, and let the wind rustle his robes in the night before he disappeared in a blur, running at his top speed for the nearby warehouse where they were staying. It'd been outfitted, of course, with all the comforts they required, thanks to Neyla's expertise with getting what she wanted.

When the other two arrived just a few moments after Shomti walked through the door, they found him lying on the bed. Nearby, he'd scrawled a poem on the wall with a piece of charcoal, and his eyes were flitting around the room at speeds that would make a normal person dizzy.

"Shomti...?" It was Neyla. Shomti let his eyes rest on her for just long enough to recognize her, and then kept them shooting through the room. "Are you okay?"

"It depends what you mean." The answer came fast. But not fast enough for Shomti. He wished things could move as fast as his brain was going... "I'm stronger and smarter and faster and healthier than I've ever been... literally. So I'm okay. But I'm not. It's a lot to deal with. I can deal with it, but that's the scariest part. I had a lot of mind to begin with, and now I'm... getting lost in it all."

"Love... don't worry, it'll be fine... just focus on me..." Shomti flicked his eyes toward Caliga and stuck out his tongue teasingly.

"That's just it... I know you... I know you so well... because you're what I focus on. You're my lover... my center. But I know you... everything about you... all the things that you do and how you do them and what you like and what you don't like and everything... you're my lover and my favorite person ever, but I just can't dissect you like that... you and Neyla, I know you both so well that I can't even talk to you because I KNOW what you're going to do and say." Shomti looked in Caliga's eyes. He knew that Caliga would hug him. Caliga was aware that he knew. Neyla could tell that both knew what the other would do, and then watched as it played out. "It's... it's... like watching a movie you've seen a hundred times before. Nothing is a surprise, nothing is entertaining. All the information... you just have the Sight and your other four senses and your mind. I have SIX now, lover, six... five were pushing it already, and now everything around me... I can feel things. Pulsing. All that energy pulsing and throbbing and humming. It looks like smoke to you, and it feels like... water. Or something like it. To me. And it's just so easy... to reach out... and..." He raised a wavering hand, flicking one finger and sending a plume of smoke—to his new-found sense an amorphous mass without definition—into Caliga's face.

"...You're right. It is scary. But isn't this better than death? We would never live again. We wouldn't ever see each other and we wouldn't know what we were missing and we wouldn't remember anything. A mind this strong... as strong as yours... is better than becoming nothing." Shomti's eyes had been closed, and even though he felt Caliga sit on the bed by him, he realized he wasn't expecting what happened next. A finger softly lifted the vulpine's chin, leveling it with Caliga's. He let his eyelids rise slowly, then focused his eyes on the unusually detailed image of his lover's face, and smiled softly. "I love you."

"I love you too." A slow sigh, followed by an agonizingly drawn-out blink, and Shomti gave Caliga's nose a lick. "I love you too..." It was all he was able to hold onto, in this world of too much going in and way too much coming out. Love... it kept him going before, when he was in immense pain caused by Clockwerk. It drove him this far... why wouldn't it be able to keep him alive forever? No reason at all. He could do this. He could hold on. "Let's get something to eat... I'm starving."

All three of them knew he was lying, of course. Sure, the body burned roughly twenty times the amount of energy... but their bodies also were twenty times more efficient at extracting that energy. And they'd all eaten before going after their other selves. It wasn't that long after... Shomti wasn't hungry. He just wanted to go somewhere he didn't know like it was the inside of his skull.

He and Caliga walked there blind. Shomti decided to keep his eyes closed and rely on this new sense, which twice nearly got him hit by a car, and once actually did. The wreck was disastrous for the car's owner, but for the most part the bumper and hood of the car bent around Shomti instead of flinging him far, far away. Neyla rolled her still open eyes at this scene, obviously chosen so Shomti could get some attention from others and thereby amuse himself. His reaction wasn't exactly what the driver expected from the fox, and so while the hyena got out to see if Shomti was alright he decided instead to check the damage to his car. Damn... this was worse than driving headlong into a tree... how in Hell did someone as little as he was survive getting hit by something going that fast, let alone bend it around himself?

That little fox, as he wondered that, walked into the restaurant and, without thinking, instantly cataloged what everyone was talking about at once and where their eyes were pointed. Not only that, but now he had direct access into everyone's minds without even a thought. He opened his eyes and let the assault of images commence as he walked up to the cashier, taking out the amount of money he already knew the restaurant required for his particular choice of food, uttered its name without wasted effort, and headed for the most strategically viable table. He didn't even have to think about any of his choices, they just... happened. Only when he was sitting at the table with Caliga and Neyla did he realize what he'd done, and he stood up abruptly, moving to a much more vulnerable seat directly adjacent to a large window, with his back to the whole world.

"Where's the fun without the risk..." It was a mutter, but it was also directed at his partners in crime, who nodded and moved to the new table. Caliga, though, continually swiveled his ears and Shomti could tell from the tiny swirls of motion on the film of his empty eyes that he was constantly looking around for danger. "Don't do that, Caliga... we can handle it if something comes up. It'll be fine."

"I'm not doing anything."

"Yes you are. You're looking around and lying through your teeth. I'm telling you, if anybody starts something we can handle it. Any one of us is capable of destroying this whole city block, brick by brick. Even SWAT can't take us out. We don't have to be as careful now." He smiled and picked up a knife from the table, sighting a target across the room and tossing it without looking. A thunk as the knife stuck in the wall caused Caliga to monitor the patrons' reactions with his Sight, and Neyla to shake her head and sigh. "Nobody knows I threw that. Nobody sees anything suspicious about it." Shomti grinned widely as their dishes arrived and he tore into his.

Later that night, he was lying in Caliga's arms and staring up at the ceiling. They were both naked, but they'd already finished for the night and so Shomti was trying to sleep. He nudged his wolf, and whispered in his ear as the other rolled over. "Do you know whether one hundred one thousand one hundred fifty-nine is a prime number? I think it is." Caliga froze, opened his milky white eyes, then groaned and elbowed Shomti.

"It doesn't matter..." Shomti paused, then smiled as he realized the truth of the matter.

"I guess it doesn't, huh?... Well, good night, love."

"Mmph."

Oh noes! Shomti's going even more insane! Well, of course. :P Poor foxie, he's been through a lot already, and I'm going to force him through a LOT more. Hehehe.


	3. Bittersweet

It's a bit longer than my last one this time, but not by too much I'm afraid. Anyway, I like the way I'm taking this story for a twist. :3 This is chapter three: only thirteen more to go! Whoo!

**Bittersweet**

Shomti opened His eyes, looking over at where Caliga and Neyla were sitting on the rubble of Clockwerk's body, slowly disintegrating beneath them. Shomti stood from where He sat, and reached for His scythe.

"Shomti, is that you?" His lips stretched into a wicked grin as He cocked His head at the two and was suddenly next to them.

"No." Clockwerk made a swipe with His scythe, taking out both their heads at once. The blade was intact, because He wanted it to be. The rest of His old body was useless, but this piece was of use to the new body He inhabited. He looked His clothes over and sneered. "Pheh. These rags will have to do for now until I can get somewhere that will repair them." His version of a joke. A single thought and the threads disassembled themselves around His now-naked vulpine body, sliding down to the floor before snaking back up His limbs and forming a new covering. Cotton became leather, elastic became metal, and then He was done with it. "Perhaps a bit dramatic, but I have always been one for shock and theatrics." A spark flew out of His finger, making the headless body of Caliga twitch. "Shock and theatrics..." His version of a joke, before He jumped with His heightened senses down between the spinning blades of a propeller and snapped His arms out like wings.

The telekinetic forces He generated pushing Himself upward were strong enough to keep Him gliding, and easy enough to sustain that He could continue gliding indefinitely by stealing all the life energy of some fish swimming in the oceans below. "So... Shomti, you finally failed. Not only that, but you've been killing yourself off... making me and my new host stronger than ever... it looks to me like the playing field is set in my advantage." He set His course for land, then—using memories from the dominated mind of His universe's Shomti—slid out of timespace, dropping back into existence in a different universe. "Yes, that's it... there's one of you here, and the energy you give off is about right for you to not be the Hunter Shomti. He'll show up eventually, and I'll get you both. With the kind of power that will generate in me, I'm going to be the God I should have been born as... of course, Gods aren't born, they make themselves. I am making myself anew."

Shomti flicked his eyes over the corpses. "Someone got here first... someone good." Caliga nodded, flexing his fingers and tightening his fist with the kind of power that would destroy the average person's bones. Shomti noticed something about that strength. "Wait... you two knew?"

"We felt the power influx. Shomti, if you didn't feel it, then they didn't get this version of you. Or..."

"Or what, Neyla?" His voice was terse and tightened as anger built in him against being left behind the other two in power growth.

"Or it was you that did it. Either way, they're gone, and probably not going to show up for a while." Shomti was about ready to choke Neyla before he realized that given the circumstances, it probably was him. He had noticed the pile of corroded metal, mostly disintegrated now, next to the bodies of Neyla and Caliga.

"Are you two thinking the same thing I am...?"

"Yeah."

Clockwerk cracked His neck and then walked through the wall separating Him from his quarry. This particular Shomti had, just like ten or fifteen others, made a deal with his Clockwerk mind instead of killing it or being killed. The only thing that made him unique was the fact that he was the only one left alive that had done so. Thing is, the heightened consciousness of having two minds in one, and the fact that this Clockwerk knew of the others' existence and death, led to him being extremely strong.

The fox stretched out His left hand, the back unmarred much like that of the vulpine He was reaching over. His bare white chestfur glinted in the moonlight shining through a nearby window, and a tiny mental whisper issued from His mind to that of this universe's Clockwerk.

_Do not be alarmed. I will kill you and you will be one with Me._ An affirmative response, and They stopped the vulpine's heart. It didn't take long for Clockwerk to toss the body out the window and climb in the bed, using memories He stole from the mind of the other to alter His appearance to match that of the other vulpine's. As He wrapped an arm around the Caliga of this universe, the pulsing black scar of a heart on His chest faded, and a silvery spiked heart appeared on His forehead.

"He killed another, to regulate the Gang. I get the feeling he's lying in wait for us somewhere." Shomti said as soon as he felt the new surge of power enter his body. It was getting more and more significant each time. "This can't have been me; it was probably Clockwerk. The pathetic weakling Shomti in this universe must have lost to him after putting off a battle with him for years. Goddammit... why would he win, though? I'm stronger than he ever was. I have been since the beginning. So—" That was when it made sense to him.

"You don't mean... but it's the only explanation. Why didn't we think of it? Why was it kept out of our minds?" Caliga put in, knowing the conclusion his lover had come to and suddenly realizing it was true. How come that hadn't crossed their minds?

"Shomti, Caliga, even IF Clockwerk was being killed and made stronger as we killed the other Shomtis, he wouldn't be made any stronger than the Shomti of his universe. After all, we're lots stronger than the other Gangs are, and that's presumably because we know it's happening. Clockwerk wouldn't be able to..." She trailed off as Shomti looked her in the eye and she figured out what he and Caliga already had.

"Not where he was already imprisoned he wouldn't. The pain and torture I put him through is too much for him to think of anything else, and it got stronger when he did and when I did. Here he hadn't been locked up yet. Here he was still loose in Shomti's mind and in the Clockwerk frame."

"And when he realized what was going on, he was able to unlock his real power..." Shomti growled up at the sky as he nodded at Caliga. "Lover, what can we...?"

"Nothing right now, except continue doing what we have been. We have to kill Clockwerk more and more, because I need to get stronger and stronger too. As long as I go up at the same rate he does, I'll have no problems. I was stronger to begin with. I'll be stronger at the end." Caliga saw a problem with this, but didn't voice it to Shomti. In either case, it wasn't just Shomti that was facing off with Clockwerk. It was the whole Gang, and whether or not Clockwerk was stronger than Shomti alone he couldn't beat all three. "Come on, let's get out of here. I'm hungry." He took hold of Caliga's hand, and a tearing sound accompanied their departure from the universe. They flew through the void for an unknown, unaware eternity, and then they both touched down in their universe of origin. Shomti breathed out in relief, looking around the plane restroom they'd ended up in. "Stroke of luck..."

"Tell me about it." They'd been anticipating a drop to the ground from the height of Arpeggio's blimp. It wouldn't have killed them, but it would have been anything but pleasant when they hit the ground. Caliga flicked the lock closed just as Neyla appeared in the already crowded room.

"Oh. Hello." They then just sort of stood there, dropping into an almost-sleep mentality to pass the time before the plane landed. Shomti unlocked the door, then the entire Gang stepped through with their weapons brandished.

"Everybody stay calm. I would much rather simply get out of this plane and on land. I'm quite hungry." The passengers and crew froze, turning to look at the three. "Yeah, we didn't get on, I know. Us three... we dropped in about, what would you say? An hour ago? You wouldn't have noticed anyway. Now then. Everybody just sit tight and I'll go ahead and get in the airport." He walked down the aisle past the still-frozen passengers, and then exited the plane like nothing unusual was happening. Caliga and Neyla followed. Once in the airport, the three avoided security by having Caliga start fights in various sectors of the airport using the kingwood he always hid somewhere on his body for occasions just like this. He was never caught without a means of defending himself.

"Alright, now for food..." Shomti frowned in thought as his stomach growled and he cast his eyes around the airport. "These restaurants all suck. You know what I could really go for, though? Something sweet."

"Um..." Caliga looked at Shomti, who looked around for the gift shop before making a bee-line straight for the candy section. "Alright then. I guess... um, Shomti, me and Neyla are going to get some food over there. At that restaurant. Find us when you have what you want." Neyla put her gun away and walked with Caliga there. They ordered fairly normal food, since their body didn't crave anything in particular. Shomti, on the other hand, arrived with an armload of candies. Mints, hard candies, and taffies were all mixed in with the most common type he carried. Chocolate.

"Shomti, what the bloody Hell are you doing?"

"I wanted chocolate. Look, they've got a kind that's seventy-two percent cacao!" He opened it up and let the bitter flavor assault his tastebuds. His extremely sensitive body reacted by tensing and then relaxing with a sigh. "Mmm... theobromine. You want some?" He held the bar out to Caliga, who simply shook his head and munched on his burger and fries. The vulpine shrugged and finished that bar, starting immediately on a white-chocolate piece. "Oooh.... sweet. Mmm... mmmmm..." He continued like that through the entire meal, until both his partners' plates were empty and he had littered the area around him with empty wrappers. "Mrrrr..."

"Shomti, I love you, but sometimes you perplex me." The fox grinned up at him cutely, eliciting a sigh from the rest of the gang.

"Awww, come on. I'm just happy. I had sugar and theobromine and chocolate. Those make you happy. Don't worry about me, love. You know my body can suck the nutrients it needs out of just about anything."

"Yeah..."

Clockwerk looked at the food that He knew was supposed to be His favorite. It was absolutely repulsive. He took one bite and forced it down, contorting His face into a grimace.

"Is something wrong, love...?" Caliga looked over at the fox he thought was his lover, who shook his head after a pause.

"Wha—? No, no. You two stay here, I just had a sudden craving for something." He stood, grabbing and tossing out His food before heading to the Starbucks next door. "Triple-strength cappuccino, no whipped cream or anything." When He received the hot beverage, He went immediately to the milk and sugar area. Not that He added much of the first. A tiny bit of cream, about a cup of sugar, and He sipped it. "Mm. Pleasant." The bittersweet flavor attacked His mind and provided a profound and complicated sensation. You didn't get much to think about when you were as smart as He was. Not to mention that the caffeine raised His awareness even further... "I rather like being biological. You can have coffee." And He headed back into the other restaurant with His coffee, much to the surprise of His Gang.

I decided that a good way to solidify the insanity of both Shomti and Clockwerk was to make them addicted to something you aren't normally able to be addicted to. Their bodies start to fall into the insanity as well as their mind; it begins to act irregularly and crave things it wouldn't normally. Note that Caliga and Neyla are still fine...


	4. The Pattern

Sorry it's been a while, been distracted and everything. So, to make up for it, I'll give you the next three chapters. Yes, three!****

The Pattern

_Bang._ It was over so fast for Shomti. One second he was there, the next second he didn't even realize he wasn't. He couldn't comprehend the fact that he was slowly slumping to the ground. The Hunter who had shot him through the brain schlicked the magazine out the bottom of the pistol's grip, slotting another round in to make up for the fired bullet and ejected shell. Nearby, Shomti whirled to the left from where he'd been trying to make his slow, dramatic entrance, and saw himself crumple to the ground. "What the fuck did you do that for?!" He was furious. Three hundred some-odd assassinations of themselves had led to unwritten rules being understood. "He was MINE! He was ME! I don't kill you, you can't kill me! I left you yours! You stole my fun! You took my kill! My designated victim! You encroached on my target! YOU KILLED ME!" The roars grew louder and louder in volume until the windows of the arcade trembled in fear. The fox snatched up the unorthodox weapon he had been planning to use and in movements too quick to be recognized as graceful, he was pinning the offender to the wall.

"Calm down, you were taking too long. We finished a half an hour ago. I tried to tell you to hurry it up but you didn't listen. You kept doing YOUR thing, Shomti. The whole Gang can't be expected to wait up for you while you have your fun." The Hunter snarled, eyes flickering between gold and red in his anger. The blunt haft of his tool of death pressed enormously hard against his partner's throat, even leading to a few cracking sounds coming from the brick wall Shomti pinned his transgressor against. Still the other appeared to remain calm.

"My fun...?! Is that what you think it is to me? This is a... a... a ritual! I'm going to be an immortal, it deserves some fucking pomp and circumstance! I can't just pop every guy in the head with a sniper rifle! Where the Hell is the challenge in that?! I need challenge! I need it, don't you get that?!" He shook his partner roughly with force that would have ruined the suspension on a monster-truck. "If I don't get SOMETHING which will take my brain and make it... occupied... then I'm going to go insane! I'll get lost in my own mind! You hear me? Lost! My senses will swallow me up! It'll all be flashes of color and meaning, touch and sight and taste and sound. There won't be any room left for ME... please... understand that..." He let go, tears filling his eyes. "Get the fuck out of here. I'm not going back today. I can't. I'll be in bed by morning. Just leave me alone and fucking think about what you just did to me." He twisted and kicked a Street Fighter machine before returning to Pacman, where he started over. He had the Pacman Pattern not just memorized, but figured out.

He didn't know it particularly from any given source, but he had it down. Oh, how he had it down. First he had to find out what the game was and where its vulnerabilities lay—two plays of the game, the first time getting to level four and the second time beating it—and then came the hard part. Shomti had to dissect the game and then work out how the ghosts moved, and finally where each fruit was at any given second in the sequence. He got a perfect score on his third playthrough, and was now working on filling the top-score chart with his name for no reason other than to live forever in arcade infamy.

There were a hundred spots on the high-score list. He ended up spending $25.50 on the game filling them all, then he sighed and left the arcade dazed. "SHOMTI" would hopefully always exist in this arcade with his perfect Pacman score on every slot of the high scores tab.

He didn't know why he cared. Maybe if... if immortality wasn't within his reach, at least this form of it was. Maybe.

The fox furrowed his brow together and skulked out of the arcade. Deep black and red energy steamed off him like fumes from the long-dead, invisible and intangible but powerful enough to cause everyone in the streets to avoid him. "Goddammit... we NEVER kill the other person's mark... we just DON'T DO THAT!" His terribly strong grip twisted the sheet steel of a newspaper dispenser into a shape resembling a newborn's Playdoh sculpture before he tore it away and threw it into a window with speed that you normally saw only from bullets. It plowed through the glass, demolished an entire aisle of foodstuffs, and buried itself in the second brick wall it encountered. "EXPLAIN THAT ONE, FUCKERS!" The shout was so loud that those nearby had no time to clutch their ears before blood poured out of them.

These people... holding their ears... so weak, so frail, and so stupid. No better than animals. No better than objects. Not worth saving... it was worth several of their lives just to make Shomti feel better. Less than a half a second and everyone within twenty feet had been beaten entirely to death, Shomti zipping back to his original position to let the suddenly quiet street speak to him. Wind blew the sides of his open jacket backwards, and he scowled at nobody, hoping it reached everybody in existence. "It's not fair... it isn't FAIR... there's no FUN in this..." A police car arrived, and deciding to try something new Shomti stretched out with all his force and grabbed the hood of the car, crushing the bumper and part of the engine block as he flipped it with only his mind. Too easy, even. He ran over in less than a blink and kicked it as hard as he could, foot bending the metal and sending the whole affair skidding into a building.

"I HATE you!!" He could only hope that his Gang could hear him. He was their leader... he was the one that was essential, he was the one that formed it, and he was the one that did most of the work. Wasn't he? He didn't need them... he kept them around because he wanted to, not because he had to. Shomti didn't NEED their help at all. "Goddammit..." The fox snarled and thrust his fist through a brick wall frustratedly.

Eventually, he couldn't justify continuing his rampage anymore. The streets of the town were strewn with bodies, several buildings were severely structurally compromised, and he was panting even though he wanted very much to just keep fighting for the rest of his life. The sun had traveled below the horizon during the massacre, and now everything was that peculiar shade of gray as it debated whether to rise or not. With a final kick to an armless corpse, he disappeared into his own universe. The safehouse was around there somewhere...

After tracking it down, he opened the door and was met by Caliga, whose soft eyes met Shomti's cold, angry ones. A tiny movement hinted that he was going to hug Shomti, but the fox deftly sidestepped his lover.

"No. No, this isn't just going to go away like that, Caliga." He shouldered his way into the room and flopped on the bed that he ordinarily shared with his black wolf. Shomti got a few seconds of uninterrupted rest before that same wolf opened the door slowly and silently, tail tucked between his legs and eyes down.

"Look, I just want you to know—" That was it. There wasn't a single worse thing for Caliga to do than to come in and keep Shomti from sleeping. He LIKED sleeping. It was the only thing, really, that kept him sane... the ability not to think for hours on end. So in turn he purposefully did the worst thing he could and stood in the middle of his lover's apology, clearly saying he wouldn't have it, without a word issuing from his lips. Once more he pushed past the wolf, and this time he lay down on the couch. Caliga took a deep breath, looked sadly at his foxie, and whimpered his way to his bed where he started to cry softly to himself, hoping and dreading that Shomti would hear his pitiful cryings. He did, and shut the door with his mind some time before drifting into unconsciousness.

Neyla walked in on Shomti sleeping, but wisely didn't say anything as she thought to herself how stupid they both were being. It was utterly ridiculous, yet here it was nonetheless. As though it made any difference who killed their other selves... as long as they ended up dead, the effect was the same.


	5. Descent

If you're squeamish about pain and violence.. well, actually, if you're squeamish about that you shouldn't have started this story in the first place. Just a fair warning, this one's got a paragraph or two of torture.

**Descent**

Shomti rolled over in his sleep, wrapping his arms around his wolf and nuzzling him. The other didn't wake up, instead just holding Shomti tighter and smiling faintly. They could have been dreaming about anything... it was impossible to tell. Shomti stood over them, his jaw clenched tightly as he watched the subconscious show of affection by two people who didn't even know he was there. In a room next door Neyla was asleep. Shomti felt a pang of longing as he stared for a short second more at the two, but pushed it out of his mind as he kicked them both to wake them up. "Caliga, against the wall. Now." The wolf blinked, confused, looking from one fox to the other. "NOW!"

"What...?" But he obeyed. The Hunter's prey tried to follow him, but Shomti grabbed him by the arm and held his knife up against his throat. "What the Hell are you doing?!" Shomti smiled wickedly and struggled with a look of intense fear on his face at the same time.

"I'm getting myself some revenge... I want you to suffer, Caliga. You're going to die slowly, wishing it would just be over quickly... and you'll do it all without a reason to live at all." His knife slid into Shomti's neck, who went limp instantly. He had nothing against this one... only Caliga.

"Noo!" That was the response he wanted. That tone of sheer agony in the wolf's voice as he watched his partner and his lover fall to the ground, dead before he hit it. "Why?! Why did you kill him!?" Shomti rolled his eyes and cracked his neck, breathing in deep as he felt the insurge of power from this latest death.

"For power... I have nothing against him. He's me, after all. But I needed his life to make mine stronger..." Neyla opened the door to see what had just happened, pistol in hand, but Shomti zipped to her side and dismantled the gun without even taking it away from her. "I haven't got anything against you either... I'll just leave you for her, then." He smacked her behind the head with one fist, knocking the tigress out quickly.

"Why are you doing this...? What do you want...?" Shomti grinned sadistically, maniacally, and took a bite out of a chocolate bar he had brought along in his pocket.

"Something you're going to give me. Now sit still!" He'd done this before, torturing as punishment... once... to the Sly Cooper of his universe. Take control. Do not relinquish it. Do not pleasure the other, pleasure only yourself. Then he added a few new things... he ran his blade along Caliga's back, creating tiny incisions below the fur. He covered the wolf in various acids and salts to make the cuts burn. Lemon juice, salt, vinegar, hot sauce. He carved his lover's face and flesh, never letting him die until the very end when he'd done so much that even he was starting to get bored. Caliga never went unconscious, never died... so Shomti carefully gutted him alive and cut out his heart. "Good night, Caliga... I love you." He added with a cruel grin.

It was over in about two hours of torment, and Shomti pulled out a can of gasoline he'd brought. He poured it over the bodies, excluding Neyla's, and lit a match, tossing it onto them. Neyla would probably burn alive, but if not then the Hunter Neyla would track her down and kill her. This was wonderful.

He arrived back in his universe covered in blood and smelling quite acidic. Caliga looked at his lover once and knew what he'd done... but couldn't get angry at him. "Neyla, you may or may not have to go kill what's left. Caliga, don't worry about it... I got him for you." He said it with a sneer intended to hurt, and it did its job. More than the fact of Shomti's actions, more than Shomti's cold shoulder towards him, he was injured by the way the fox knew just how to get to him and did it anyway. The intent to hurt was all Shomti needed to bring Caliga to the brink of sobbing... Shomti knew that. He knew how to hurt and he quietly took a bite from his chocolate as he did it, pretending to ignore the wolf's heavy breathing that was the only sound in the room for a long while.

"Is... is this how it's going to be? I... I love you, Shomti, but... but... are you just going to do this for eternity, hurting me like that whenever I do something wrong?" The fox refused to answer, instead picking up a knife and looking at it for a very long while. It was one of his own designs, and the organic curves surrounding the handle would have made it too heavy for the majority of people... as things stood it was already five pounds. But that wasn't a problem for this fox. He had no problems with wielding things in one hand that most couldn't handle in two. "Well...?"

"You didn't just do something wrong... you drove me that little bit closer to the edge... you pushed me that inch or two down this slippery slope. I'm going to go insane someday, Caliga, I'm going to lose my mind, and you helped it happen that tiny bit sooner. When I go, I don't know what I'll do... I... might not love you. Do you want that?" Shomti ran a whetstone along the edge of the sinuous knife's blade, the grinding feeling telling him exactly what made it up and how hard the edge was, how hard the stone was... the kind of sensory perception even master polishers would never have access to.

"No. But you need to tell me these things... I can't read your mind." Caliga stopped when he said that, and Shomti's reply crashed into his head. "It was a figure of speech, I'm sorry, I can, but.. but I wasn't..."

"You weren't thinking. That's what it was. You didn't think about me and my sanity. You used to, all the time... everywhere we went you would hold me and kiss me and make sure I was happy. Make sure I didn't get pulled over the edge by that pain, ensure I was always more than a killing machine... you AREN'T doing it anymore." Shomti took a deep breath, then another bite of his chocolate. "I want to love you, and I do, but if you let me fall there's no way I'll forgive you."

"I won't... I won't ever let you fall... I'm so sorry, Shomti..." Neyla rolled her eyes at the two and opened up her journal to ink another page or two with her analysis of the book she'd just finished reading.


	6. What's Red and Cold?

**What's Red and Cold?**

Shomti looked into the window of a French candy shoppe, suddenly feeling the strangest urge to have some chocolate. "You guys go on ahead, I'll catch up. I'm gonna grab a bite to eat." He said to Caliga and Neyla, then headed into the confectionery to buy himself the object of his longing. White or dark...? Or milk? As he was pondering this, he was suddenly aware of a stinging sensation in his arm, and he swatted at it briefly. Funny, he hadn't heard a bee coming... oh well. He went into the store, and felt the same stinging sensation up in his shoulder. It had just grazed his deltoid, and he swatted at it again in an annoyed manner. Another bee? He shrugged, walking over the chocolate. He didn't realize something was wrong until someone asked him if he felt alright.

"Of course I do. Why wouldn't I?"

"You're bleeding." He looked at the man like he was crazy, but then happened to glance down at his arm and found red blood matting the black fur on his hand, dripping down to the floor. Now that he was aware of it, he also felt a tickle of some sort moving down from his shoulder. He cautiously touched his upper arm, nearly afraid of what he would see. His hand came back red. The next three things that happened weren't able to be processed by his brain: first, the window of the candy shop shattered. Second, Shomti's brains got blown out by a pebble that had only seconds ago been lying on the ground across the street, hence why he wasn't able to process anything. Third, the candy bar he'd chosen dropped to the floor from his now-limp hand.

Shomti smiled grimly to himself, crossing the street in a flash, weaving between cars driven by people that simply saw him vanish on one side and appear on the other. He walked slowly into the store, amused thoroughly by the various people freaking out, picked up the chocolate bar his other self had been about to buy, and set it—wrapper bloodstained from his latest kill—and smiled in what could only be described as a friendly manner. "Just this, thanks."

A few minutes later and he left the shop with bloody windows and floors from the struggles of the people who had tried their best to escape the obviously insane fox. "I love chocolate..." He said quietly to himself as he walked away and unwrapped it with his mind, taking a small bite from it and savoring the flavor. Mm... caramel. A good choice.

Caliga dropped smoothly down from the building, drying his paws on his shirt. Unlike Shomti, who was eating his candy with hands still stained with the blood of his murder victims, he had washed his hands of the blood he'd encountered. "I don't see how you can eat candy with your hands soaked like that, Shomti. Doesn't it get on the chocolate and make it taste terrible?"

"It gets on the chocolate, yeah, but I like it." He took another bite, eyes wide in his crazy way as he chewed and swallowed with a look of pure, insane, blissful pleasure. "Metallic, salty... bloody. You should try some." The fox held out his candy to Caliga, who cringed and politely refused.

"I, already ate." He lied. Even his lover, beautiful in every way to him, was kind of disgusting after one of his massacres. "Blood's not my thing anyway. You plan on taking a shower before we go to bed tonight?" Shomti's eyes lit up, laughing like he thought the question was the funniest thing in the world and absolutely stupid.

"Of course! Blood's not your thing, Caliga!" And he laughed his way home, where Neyla—the first to have finished her killing for the day—was penciling in her journal. She'd run out of ink in her favorite pen, and rather than buy another she had taken to using pencils. When asked as to the reason, she'd simply answered to Shomti that it was more logical. You couldn't grow fond of a pencil that took much less time to wear down than did a pen, and aside from that you could see the pencil as it approached the end of its lifetime. Pens took longer, and you could never tell when it was going to die on you. Coping with the loss of something is always easier when you don't expect it to last longer than it will. Shomti was actually less interested in that than he let on, instead trying to subliminally tell Neyla that she had a dried drop of her own blood on her cheek that she had apparently missed when she washed up afterwards. She didn't notice, however, and proceeded to comment on how absolutely filthy Shomti was with stale blood. She insisted he take a shower immediately, something he wasn't exactly loathe to do since he wanted to get Caliga in bed immediately.

The make-up sex that night was great, and Shomti know that he and Caliga were both glad they'd solved their problem even if just for the sex afterwards. Shomti, actually, was glad for another reason as well: it was damned fun watching how much pain he could inflict on a single being without time constraints, without any limits on methods, and without holding anything back. He imagined, after having been screwed six ways to Sunday and while lying in bed with Caliga, the very last thing the other Caliga would have seen in his life as his vision faded. Perhaps the lack of oxygen in his brain would have even made it an exaggerated hallucination.

_The face of his tormentor slowly changed into an angel, holding up instead of his heart a beautiful glass ball that he somehow knew represented his life. Light shone from behind the savior before him, and he tried with all his strength to reach up to him. Then the light turned black and the angel was a black-robed demon smiling cruelly down on him. The glass ball shattered in his hand, and everything faded into a dark, eternal silence..._

Wonderful. Shomti couldn't help but think that it was beautiful in a sick, twisted way... Did the fact that he enjoyed everything he did make him evil...? Insane...? Or was he something beyond those classifications, something that was too strong to be evil no matter what unspeakable acts he committed? Something that no matter how twisted his mind became, was never insane? That had to be the answer. He would surely know if he was evil... or insane. He looked down at his hand and for the split second before he fell asleep, he could imagine the icy red blood flowing through his veins.


End file.
